Reports | ICC reject BCCI’s proposal to reschedule board meeting
The International Cricket Council (ICC) have reportedly turned down the BCCI’s request to reschedule its board meeting that was supposed to be held between March 27 to March 29. The BCCI had requested a change in the date owing to the meeting date clashing with the start of the IPL, on March 29.
With the ICC annual board meeting set to be held between March 27 to March 29, the BCCI had earlier written to the council requesting them to consider changing the meeting dates, owing to it clashing with the start of the 13th edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL), which was speculated to kick off on March 29.
However, it seems now that the ICC, who had informed countries about the dates of the meeting in August last year, have made it clear to the BCCI that under no circumstances would they consider rescheduling the meeting.
"The BCCI had written to the ICC to request for a date change, but that wasn't possible. The dates for these meetings (there is a series of ICC meetings in Dubai from March 27-29) were communicated to all the member countries in August last year,” a source told TOI.
“All the travel / accommodation / meeting space is booked for all the meeting participants accordingly.”
The source further revealed that the dates for the ICC’s next annual conference - July 17 and July 18 2020 - were fixed in August 2019, too, and went on to question as to why the BCCI did not take these things into consideration whilst scheduling the IPL, given they knew the dates well beforehand.
"The dates for all the ICC meetings are fixed well in advance. Even the dates for the next annual conference of the ICC, scheduled to be held in Cape Town on July 17 & 18 this year, were finalized last August itself," the source further added.
“The question that is bound to be raised in the BCCI is that if the dates of the meetings were fixed in August last year, why were they not considered before the IPL schedule was prepared?”
This ruckus might mean that the BCCI might now have to instead reschedule the start date of IPL 2020 despite board President Sourav Ganguly informally informing last month that the T20 extravaganza would most likely kick off on March 29.